Pages tagged "Bill of Rights"

Most discussion on the National Security Agency (NSA) concerns its appetite for electronic records and its conflict with the 4th Amendment: the part of the Bill of Rights that prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures and requires any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. Although some NSA searches are covered by warrants, other efforts just scoop up data streams worldwide.

NSA is a highly hierarchal and secretive agency. Signals intelligence has been among the most closely guarded of secrets. The breaking of the German and Japanese codes during World War II resulted in important victories. NSA culture treats opponents such as al Qaeda and Iran as existential enemies like Japan and Germany. Yet the nature of the current conflict is more complicated than World War II or the Cold War.

Americans are familiar with the language of political and civil rights – one person, one voice, one vote; equal treatment before the law. We are less familiar with the justification for the social rights that have been at the center of our great political and social movements over the last century. For all citizens to flourish in a democratic society, they must be guaranteed such basic human needs as high-quality education, health care and security in old age. These goods are provided to every member of most democratic societies not by purchase on the private market, but through equitably financed, high-quality public goods and social insurance.

Join Steve Max, a founder of the legendary community organizing school, the Midwest Academy, to practice talking about socialism in plain language. Create your own short rap. Use your personal experience and story to explain democratic socialism. Prepare for those conversations about socialism that happen when you table or canvass. This workshop is for those who have already had an introduction to democratic socialism, whether from DSA's webinar or from other sources. Questions? Contact Theresa Alt <talt@igc.org> 607-280-7649.

DSA was concerned to find out that the company that provides our website and online organizing infrastructure, NationBuilder, had as a client the Trump campaign and other right-wing candidates. Progressives built this kind of infrastructure and tools for digital organizing and we have now lost that organizing edge. We are moving to identify other options for a CMS/CRM. As an under-resourced, member funded organization, this move will take time for us to carry out, but it is an important statement for us to make.